Thirteen Tuesdays

Bat outta hell.

That’s how my mom would’ve described how I drove to the hospital when the nurse called at 5:37pm.

Either I was naive (or dense) or the nurse was vague in her call to the next of kin. I thought at the end of my breakneck drive we’d both be breathing when I arrived.

I’ve spent two years deciphering that phone call and I still have questions.

My mother was no longer with us when my tires squealed into the parking lot. This is something the nurse may have been trying to tell me, something that made my plea — while grabbing coat and keys — futile: “Please make sure she knows she is not alone.”

That was Mom’s one and only request for her ending.

I brought her to the hospital at 10am that morning and we were eating Chick-fil-A in the waiting room at noon. I left her in the hospital staff’s capable hands at 3pm, kissing her forehead and telling her I loved her. A small blessing on a heartbreaking day.

The doctor called me before I even made it home, a call that was just as cryptic as the nurse’s would be two hours later. Maybe this story can serve as a cautionary tale for medical staff — dumb it down for us, please.

His voice was a mixture of concern and nonchalant. I remember the phrase, “we’ll do the best we can” and something about oxygen levels. I told him I’d be back at 6:30pm but if I needed to come sooner, please let me know. That would have been a great time for him to state plainly that she may not be here that long. That’s not information the average Joe should have to guess or assume.

Mom’s “Do Not Resuscitate” order was as important to her as the cat sticker on her front door. That feline-shaped adhesive was a call-to-action so firefighters would know the current head-count of her fur babies in case her home went up in flames — and God help them if they missed a single tail.

I slid the DNR out from under the magnets that held it front and center on her refrigerator and brought it with us to the hospital that morning. While that single sheet of paper was necessary for those wanting to respect her wishes at home, it wasn’t the correct form for inside the hospital — with all it’s life-saving equipment.

I was lucky to get an empathetic nurse who added it to Mom’s chart with a tender smile.

Not only did she file that paper, her team held to it at 5:30pm.

When I arrived, breathless, at her room, it was completely empty except for Mom lying still on the bed. All machines monitoring vitals, all supply carts and the usual paraphernalia had been removed.

The emptiness of the room was something I noticed hours later when every detail of that day began to run like a morbid ticker tape through my consciousness, one that would constantly scroll for the next thirteen weeks.

When I give that day a different ending it doesn’t turn out any better. I could have asked more questions or read between the lines and made a beeline back to the hospital. I could have been there when she struggled to take her last breaths — gasping for air — I was unfortunately told, surrounded by a medical staff who knew they were not to take a single step to help, other than to hold her hand. And speak comforting words.

Man, I hope they did both of those.

As selfish as it is — I’m glad I wasn’t there. I would have to live with the trauma of that terrifying helplessness and anguish for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, Mom only had to endure it for a few moments.

Maybe that’s cold-hearted or maybe I just knew my mother well — there’s no way she’d want me to hold that picture forever.

Thanks to my phone I can listen to my mom’s voice anytime I want. And I’ve backed-up her last messages to the Cloud and emailed them to myself — just in case I forget my phone is in my back pocket before I hear that ominous in a bathroom stall.

That’s my worst nightmare — aside from losing another family member.

Her last message, which was five days earlier, started the way every message did — “Hey Sweetie Pie.”

It was the same way every answered and unanswered call began for as long as I can remember.

Two years seems like a long time but if my phone suddenly sounded with the doorbell ringtone — the one assigned only to Mom — it would still take me a full beat to remember that’s impossible, she’s gone.

I’ve wondered what the Pavlovian response would be if I overheard that ringtone from a stranger‘s phone. Immediate tears? A smile?

“Hey Sweetie Pie.” Sometimes those three words were drawn out in an exasperated, guilt-trippy way with the underlying message being, “I’m calling again because you haven’t returned my last call…” I imagine it’s only the Boomer generation that thinks you have to return a phone call that doesn’t explicitly say, “call me back.”

She finally got wise and added those words to the closing of every third message. That left me to judge the actual need and timeliness of returning her call by her meter, annoyance, buoyancy or breathlessness.

If my family history is any clue I’ll have 30–45 years without my mom. Maybe I shouldn’t have let a single one go to voicemail.

It took thirteen Tuesdays before I didn’t notice it was Tuesday. I guess that’s one way to gauge my healing after loss. I wonder how many January 31st’s I’ll live through before I don’t remember to give pause to January 31st.

My mother’s death isn’t the only thing that is memorialized on that last day of January. It was also the end of my monthly cycle. I lost my mother and my ability to become a mother on the same day. Only one of those things makes me sad.

On Mom’s first heavenly birthday, I took a half day off from work and did random acts of kindness for those who meant the most to my mom. The next year I simply drove to her own apartment complex and wept on the stone wall nearby.

I imagine I’ll use it differently each year until it’s nothing more than a date on which I pause to remember our four decades together.

I’ve never approved of death anniversaries. I’ve always thought it was an unnecessary occasion to point out — I think of death as simply going into the next room. Mom is fine; she’s being and doing and living — elsewhere. No need to call out the day when her body stopped and her soul continued.

But when my first January 31st rolled around, my judgment of this need to memorialize her passing, softened — something that happens whenever we suffer through what we harshly judged of others. If there are only two days a year when we truly give ourselves the freedom and space to mourn, let that be.

My mom was one tough cookie, another great phrase from her generation. She battled through an entire life of visual-impairment and eventual blindness. She divorced from a dead marriage and moved to a new space, which her eyes never saw, in her sixties. She hand-raised and gave a loving home to more than twenty cats. She raised two human beings on one salary and no car. She cared immensely for her four grandchildren. She did it all with a bad back, crummy eyes, and a failing heart.

I am grateful she got out when she did, her physical being was no longer serving her and her soul needed to fly on to better things.

But man…I’d trade all the voicemails for one more day.